During Lockdown, I Let the Dog Sleep in My Bed Again

by Maggie Smith
 

Last night my daughter cried at bedtime.
Of loneliness, she said. She’s seen the graph,
the jagged mountain we need to press
into a meadow, and maybe she pictures
the drive home from southern Ohio,
how the green hills flatten without us
doing a damn thing. No sacrifice required.
I tell her the steep peak makes loneliness
our work, makes an honorable task of it.
But I shut myself in the bathroom and cry, hard,
into a hand towel. I walk alone in the snow,
squinting up into the big, wet flakes,
letting them bathe my face. I tell myself
it is a kind of touch. I tell myself it will do.